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In London more and more people lose money when they sell their house. The question is whether it is the canary in Europe’s mine

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Located north of the Thames, Tower Hamlets is one of the districts most emblematic from London. In fact, it covers a large part of the East End, the historic center of the capital. For years (like most of the city) it also represented something else: a juicy market for those who wanted to invest in housing and achieve high returns. Not anymore. In 2025 about 30% Of the owners who got rid of their homes in that neighborhood (mostly apartments) had to do so for less money than they paid at the time. And it’s not just something that happens in Tower Hamlets. What has happened? That in London housing is no longer an infallible business. This is suggested at least by the latest study published by Hamptons, which reveals that in 2025 Londoners were the Britons most likely to lose money from the sale of their properties. Even more than its neighbors in the northeast of the United Kingdom, who have spent years leading the ranking. “Rising London house prices are no longer the safe bet they once seemed,” concludes the report, which is supported by the Property Registry. What do the figures say? that last year 14.8% of people Those who sold their home in London did so for less money than they originally paid. It may seem like a modest percentage, but it is striking for several reasons. To begin with because it is the largest in the entire United Kingdom. The national average is 8.7% and there are British regions where this indicator is much lower, such as Wales (6.2%), East Midlands (6.7%) or West Midlands (6.9%). London has effectively ousted Nort Easth, which had dominated the sales ranking with losses for the last decade. Is Tower Hamlets a unique case? No. Tower Hamlets is the London district where the trend is best appreciated, but is not the only one in which a significant proportion of homeowners (28.2%) have lost money by getting rid of their homes. In the City, 26.2% of sellers closed transactions in “red numbers”, in Kensington & Chelsea 22.4%, in Westminster 22.1% and in Hammersmith & Fulham 20.8%. Curiously, in the cheapest district of London, Barking & Dagenham, only that indicator is much lower: 5.3%. “In some cases, even homeowners who bought a decade ago risk getting back less than they paid, something almost unthinkable in 2015. And for many the sums are small,” the study insists. “In the coming years it is likely that more sellers will have missed out on the price boom that London experienced between 2012 and 2016, as they bought at the peak of the market.” Is there more data? Yes. The Hamptons report raises some interesting ideas. For example, most of the sales with losses (close to 90%) were carried out by apartments. If we talk about houses, the photo is somewhat different. Hamptons technicians recognize that in 2025 the average seller in London pocketed 172,500 pounds more than what they originally paid when purchasing their home, but they insist on the increase in sales at a loss: if in 2019 they represented 5.9%, in 2025 “red” operations already represented 14.8%. Is it the only report? No. Over recent months, more analyzes have been published showing that the London property market is not going through its best moment. There is talk of a price drop of 5.1% at the end of 2025 (which takes the market even further away from the 2022 data) and even from a sluggish prime housing market that will not rise until at least 2028. “In London, the growth of house prices is no longer a safe bet,” he explains to Financial Times Aneisha Beveridge, Hamptons manager. There is studies which show that prices are declining in half of London’s neighborhoods, leaving a “two-speed” market: that of the most expensive (and volatile) areas and the cheapest, which has demonstrated greater resilience. In December Bloomberg warned that homes worth more than two million run the risk of depreciating, losing almost 5% of their value in one year. What is the reason? The big question. When explaining the London trend the analysts they point out several factors. One of the main ones is the regulatory change, marked by the end of discounts to the purchase of housing and a greater penalty for the purchase of second homes and houses as investments. The authorities have also focused on the prime segment, rethinking the status nom-dom for large foreign fortunes and raising local taxes for the most expensive properties. Added to the above is the influence of Brexit, the exorbitant prices that London reached in 2022 or how difficult it is for families to access the market, partly because the cost of rent neutralizes the ability to save. The question that some are already made is whether London is an isolated case or should be understood as a canary in the mine for other European capitals. Image | Benjamin Davies (Unsplash) In Xataka | Housing is getting so expensive that in the United Kingdom there are already people opting for plan B: living on boats

The US is launching a missile capable of burying the Tomahawk on Iran. And the big question is where are you doing it from?

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The image of an American precision strike has been linked to silhouettes taking off from the sea or from the air. However, in recent years the Army has invested billions in recovering a capability that seemed secondary: hitting very, very far… from the mainland. In that bet may lie one of the greatest transformations of modern military power. A debut that changes theater. USA has premiered in combat the so-called Precision Strike Missileits new tactical ballistic missile, within the operation against Iran. It is not a minor evolution of the former ATACMSit is rather a leap in scope and concept. With more than 500 kilometers radius (and room to grow towards 650 and even 1,000) practically doubles the depth of ground fire available until now. As in many other “premieres”, it is not symbolic, it is doctrinal. A missile to bury the Tomahawk. The PrSM flies at speeds greater than Mach 3 in the terminal phase, allowing it to arrive earlier and better penetrate hardened targets. Forehead to Tomahawkslower and subsonic, the new system greatly reduces the enemy’s reaction time and complicates interception. Additionally, two missiles fit in a single HIMARS launcher pod, meaning that double the punch per vehicle. Of course, it does not replace the Tomahawk in strategic range, but in regional scenarios it can be left in the background due to speed, survivability and response capacity against time-sensitive targets. A PrSM capsule seen in front of a US Army M142 during an exercise in Australia. The M142 carries a 227 mm rocket with six projectiles. The Persian Gulf as a platform. At this point, geography explains a good part of the movement. The Gulf has a medium width of just 250 kilometerswith American allies aligned on the western bank and Iran occupying the eastern one. With a range of 500 kilometers, a land battery located anywhere on the Arab side can cover wide swathes from Iranian territory without the need to penetrate its airspace. That makes the missile a perfect tool to support an air campaign without exposing fighters or depending exclusively on ships. A test launch of a PrSM The key question: from where? The most decisive fact remains unknown. No has been confirmed Which Gulf country has authorized the use of its soil to launch these missiles. This mystery is not technical, it is rather political. The reason? Allowing a US land battery to fire on Iran automatically makes that territory in possible objective of retaliation. Many States in the region have historically preferred discreetly support to Washington while avoiding public exposure. Put another way, the exact location of the launch determines what capital takes on the direct risk. Hunting sensitive targets. Short-range ballistic missiles are especially effective against radars, mobile launchers and air defense nodes. Plus: they can be maintained on permanent alert and strike within minutes when a target arises. In a conflict where neutralizing anti-aircraft systems is key to sustaining air superiority, the PrSM provides a ground suppression capability which until now relied heavily on aviation and naval missiles. Beyond Iran. If you also want the premiere of the PrSM send a signal to other scenarios, especially the Pacific. Its planned evolution includes anti-ship versions capable of attacking moving targets and variants with greater range that will touch the threshold of medium-range missiles. It we have counted before. The US Army wants regain prominence in long-range warfare, traditionally dominated by the Air Force and Navy. Iran, in that sense, has been the first real test bed. Cost, volume and future. It is the “but” of any ballistic missile. Each projectile can exceed a million and a half dollars, although the price has been dropping as production increases. The goal is to reach up to 400 units annuallywhich will expand the available inventory and facilitate its sustained use. With future versions that could exceed the 1,000 kilometers rangethe PrSM does not seem just a substitute for the ATACMS. It is the first stone of a terrestrial architecture that seeks to project deep power from solid ground. What is really at stake. In short, the real twist is not that the United States has launched a new missile in a war, but that it has from the ground and against Iran. If he Tomahawk has symbolized precision warfare from the sea, the PrSM aims to represent the return of the tactical ballistic missile as a flexible instrument of regional pressure. And while it is not known with certainty from what ground ally is taking off, the political dimension of that launch will continue to be as relevant as the technical one. Image | CENTCOM, Australian Army, US Army In Xataka | If the question is how much of Europe is within range of Iran’s missiles, the answer is simple: a fairly large In Xataka | The arrival of the B-2s to Iran can only mean one thing: the search for the greatest threat to the United States has begun

If the question is how much of Europe is within range of Iran’s missiles, the answer is simple: a fairly large

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In recent decades, the missile range It has become a silent measure of a country’s strategic power. Every few hundred kilometers added to their radius of action change not only technical maps, but also political calculations, alliances and perceptions of security. In this game of distances, Europe already it doesn’t appear that far away as before. From 1,300 to 3,000 km. It we count yesterday. Iran has built its deterrence on a missile family medium range (the Shahab-3, Sejjil, GhadrEmad or Khorramshahr) with ranges that start at 1,300 kilometers and are around 2,000–2,500 kilometers in most configurations, although certain variants of the Khorramshahr could approach 3,000 if they reduce payload. That threshold is what changes the European map, and the reason is very simple. With 2,000 kilometers, the eastern Mediterranean and southeastern Europe are clearly within the radiusand with 3,000, the arc of threat extends into the heart of the continent. The difference, therefore, is not technical, it is strategic. The eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus has been the clearest sign that the border is no longer theoretical. British bases of Akrotiri and Dhekeliaused as logistics and aerial projection nodes, are fully within range of both ballistic missiles and long-range drones such as the Shahed-136. In fact, Greece enters in the same arch, with Souda Bay in Crete within 2,300–2,400 kilometers from Iran. Athens, Sofia and Bucharest are among the capitals that fit comfortably within the 2,000 kilometer radius. Türkiye and Iraq: the exposed belt. Türkiye is located in the first critical strip. Incirlik, just over 1,000 kilometers from Tehran, is high value target for its role in allied architecture and its link to the nuclear sharing scheme. Kürecik, with its AN/TPY-2 radar, is the forward “eye” of the anti-missile shield and therefore a logical target in any prior suppression scenario. In Iraq, bases like Ain al-Asad or Erbil, in addition to the NATO mission in Baghdad, are not only within ballistic range, but also in the radius of drones and networks of militias supported by Tehran. Central Europe: the gray area. When the second and third arcs of the map are projected, cities appear like Budapest, Vienna or Bratislava on the periphery of the estimated range. Bucharest clearly enters the range of 2,000–2,500 kilometers, which places the base Aegis Ashore of Deveselu in a sensitive position within the maximum Iranian perimeter. If Khorramshahr really reached 3,000 kilometers, and that remains to be seen, the threat contour would touch cities like Berlin and Rome. Of course, just another hypothesis, but the pressure is expanding from the eastern flank towards the political center of Europe. The pieces of the shield and their limits. The Aegis Ashore system in Romaniathe one located in Poland and the Arleigh Burke destroyers in the Mediterranean they form the backbone of defense against Middle Eastern vectors. Germany, furthermore, has added the Arrow 3 system to reinforce its upper interception layer. However, any attack would have to fly over monitored airspace. like Türkiye, Iraq or Syriawhich adds operational complexity and interception windows. The shield exists, there is no doubt, but it does not eliminate the risk equation. Drones and saturation. Impossible to ignore it. Beyond ballistic missiles, Iran has turned attack drones into strategic multipliers. With ranges of up to 2,000–2,500 kilometers and costs much lower than missiles, they can be launched in waves to wear down defenses. Its previous use against British facilities in Cyprus demonstrates that the geographical barrier is no longer an automatic shield. The combination of expensive and cheap systems complicates defense. Underground and asymmetrical doctrine. As we count yesterday, the construction of “underground cities” to store and manufacture missiles is part of a strategy designed to compensate for the absence of a modern air force in Iran. Since 1979, sanctions pushed Tehran to invest in rockets, tunnels and technological alliances with other states, turning the missile into your main tool of deterrence. This asymmetric logic does not seek to equal the West in air and sea, but rather to impose cost and vulnerability from land. What changes strategically. As long as the effective range remains around 2,000 kilometers, the threat is mainly concentrated in the eastern Mediterranean and southeast Europe. If the actual ceiling is close to 3,000 km, the european political map enters the calculation. The difference between 2,400 and 3,000 kilometers is not a technical nuance, because it is the line that separates the periphery of the continental core. In that margin, a priori, the perception of risk for European capitals and the credibility of allied deterrence are at stake. Image | Mahdi Marizad, Defense Intelligence Agency, Mehr News Agency In Xataka | The arrival of the B-2s to Iran can only mean one thing: the search for the greatest threat to the United States has begun In Xataka | Iran has just attacked a base in Europe: the paradox of Spain is that it condemns the war, but the US does not need to ask to use its bases

Apple has been setting up a health system parallel to public health for years. The question is whether public health will do something about it.

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I haven’t worn a watch of any kind on my wrist for years. Partly for convenience, partly for not having another device to distract myself with. The paradox is that I find it more and more advisable to wear or give a smartwatch, precisely because of the leap they have made in monitoring our health in recent years. The other day, Dr. Miguel Ángel Cobos Gil, a prestigious Spanish cardiologist, told us at a press event that “the Apple Watch provides more parameters than anyone admitted to a coronary unit.” It made me think: we already have very reliable medical technology in our pockets, on our wrists and even in our ears. And now what? A parallel system to saturated healthcare Healthcare in Spain has just concluded a few days of strike in which they demand improvements in a system with problems: saturated primary care, insufficient personnel, underfinancing or territorial fragmentation are just a few. Spain is not the only one like this. Countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy or Portugal are struggling with similar situations, and if we look at Latin America or Asia the photo even it gets more complicated. Doctor Miguel Ángel Cobos Gil at an Apple Health event in Madrid. It is no coincidence that Apple has spent years setting up a whole parallel health system through its best-selling devices. You can now take a medically approved EKG with Apple Watch In a few minutes, the iPhone notifies you if you have risk of falling when analyzing how you walkand AirPods are increasingly looking more like a smart sonotone. Apple is the one that is taking the most solid and visible steps, but it is not the only one. Samsung integrates teleconsultations, a game to detect Alzheimer’sbooking diagnostic tests and ordering medications at Samsung Health —starting with Indiawhich is no coincidence—; Huawei gives you ten health parameters in a single gesture with its Watch 5; Google bets on a medical coach with AI on top of Fitbit and Pixel Watch data. Almost the entire tech sector is looking at the same place. Useful technology to help us with our health is already here. The problem is how to make all that data that our devices give us use for something in a collapsed public system. Your doctor doesn’t have time to look at the data on your watch And now we have been in this house for ten years: We have a lot of information about preventing diseases and devices that can help us do so. However, there is still no effective system to address it. Cobos Gil summed it up bluntly: “urgent care works.” When something really goes wrong, the system responds. The problem is before, in that period of time where an asymptomatic disease could be detected and treated with a change in habits or a simple medication, but where the family doctor cannot dedicate fifteen minutes to you if he does not see something serious or actionable. Hypertension doesn’t hurt. Atrial fibrillation does not warn. Apple Watch possible hypertension alert system And this is exactly where technology comes in—or should come in—. A smartwatch does not sleep, has no waiting list and does not need you to go see it: it passively monitors whenever you wear it, accumulates months of data and notifies you when it detects an anomaly. Cobos Gil mentioned something that illustrates the difference well: a conventional cardiac holter monitor must be taken for about 24 or 48 hours, and many times it does not capture anything because the arrhythmia does not appear in that time window. With three months of data from the Apple Watch, he says he’s gotten diagnostic information he otherwise wouldn’t have had, and has even “had to anticoagulate patients who were cleared by a Holter monitor.” This gap is especially relevant for the older population, especially if they live alone. Spain is aging fast and a silent heart attack, a fall, or an arrhythmia that is accelerating are situations in which the time between the event and medical attention is everything, and in which not having a family member or caregiver nearby—the child in another city, the grandchildren in another country—creates a very vulnerable situation for these people. These are situations that happen. In Applesfera we have just told the case of a lady who suffered a fall due to an epileptic attack in Torremolinos and his Apple Watch helped everything end in a scare. The striking thing about this is that hospitals already do this type of monitoring in extreme cases. When a modern pacemaker or defibrillator is implanted, the hospital monitors the patient remotely and can intervene if something goes wrong. A watch like the Watch takes that logic from the hospital to home: it allows a son in Madrid to see in real time if his mother’s heart in a town in Teruel is beating strangely, or to receive an alert if she has fallen and hasn’t gotten up. It is not medicine of the future. It is medicine of the present waiting for the system to learn to incorporate it. The limit that no one has set Tim Cook at WWDC 24 What Apple, Samsung, Huawei or Google have built so far is the beginning. Apple has been working for years on non-invasive blood glucose monitoring —without being punctured, through optical spectroscopy—and the most solid rumors suggest that could come to the Apple Watch in 2027 or 2028. Before that, I’m pretty sure we’ll see an AI-powered medical assistant built into the Health app — known internally as Mulberry Project— trained with your real clinical data. Tim Cook has been repeating for years that the Apple’s greatest contribution to humanity will be in healthcare. What it doesn’t say is exactly how far. Because the question that these devices do not answer is one that seems very important to me: Where do they set the limit for themselves, and who sets it for them from the outside? Early detection of … Read more

If the question is “how did I meet your mother,” this graph reveals how much the answer has changed since 1930

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Allow me an indiscreet question if you have a partner: how did you meet? A quick review around me gives me some answers like “class”, also others like “common friends” and in many cases Tinder would come to the fore. Well, and I also know of some cases of Twitter or even forum sharing. I am a millennial and so is the majority of my environment. If I asked this same question to my mother or if I asked it to my grandmother (if she were alive), I might find the same answers, but the proportions would change. However, for 20 years there has been one way of dating that overwhelmingly prevails over the rest, considering “success” as having a partner: internet wins by a landslide. Although like me you can do that quick review of your environment, there is someone who has done it more and better (statistically speaking): a team from Stanford University has repeated this study titled “How the couples meet and stay together” for several years that, although you can read, James Eagle has turned it into a visual resource to analyze how this modus operandi of flirting has changed over time: a very revealing one minute video. This video covers almost a century of dating habits: from 1930 to 2024 and it includes classic options such as friends, family, in a bar, at work, neighbors, at university or school, at church and of course, on the internet. Obviously, in the 1930s and subsequent decades, the Online option was a huge zero. But be careful because in 1981 it started timidly with 0.01%. In the 30s, the best way to flirt was for your cousin to introduce you to your future partner (followed by friends and school): the family as a matchmaker which lasted until 1944, at which time it was superseded by Friendships. As leisure options begin to become popular and women enter the workforce, we see how “at work” or “in a bar” gain ground until they are able to share the podium with your friends back in the 80s. How the democratization of the internet changed dating The 90s is a critical moment: online begins a meteoric rise that consolidates it as the most infallible method to find a partner in 2011, displacing those eternal friendships that have been helping us flirt since time immemorial. As striking as the rise and total consolidation of the internet is the drastic fall of all other options: in the last 10 years we have gone from only friendships holding the type with a 20% share to that in 2024, the year of the end of video, flirting online is consolidated as the quintessential method with more than 60% of the pie. Being introduced to your partner by your colleagues happens in only one in 10 cases, something that makes sense in an increasingly individualistic society, which complicates even making new friends. If you are a single person, it is clear that apps are the place to find dates, according to this study. However, dating apps are no longer as convincing, especially to new generations: this Evenbrite report dating back to 2024 reveals how Gen Z and millennials are starting to get tired of the format. Because although they continue to flirt online, it’s not like before: They prefer to ask for Instagram than to ask for a date by Tinder. Fear of “public failure” is killing traditional flirting. However, the Internet as a dating method remains stronger than ever: because before apps existed, we were already dating in the most unexpected places. Without going any further, in the mythical Terra chat. In Xataka | Tinder has understood something uncomfortable: young people are alone and no longer want to flirt like before In Xataka | The world is experiencing a matchmaking crisis. 5,000 students and an algorithm are experimenting to fix it Cover | James Eagle

If the question is who is going to illuminate part of the new A-5 tunnel, the answer is simple: the sun

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He burial of the A5 continues its course. It is one of the most ambitious works in the recent history of the Spanish capital and, after months of headaches, you can see the light at the end of the tunnel. There is still a way to go, but the light thing is quite literal if we take into account that, in the surface park, there will be enormous pergolas that will not only serve to provide shade. They will be the battery of the tunnel. The pergolas. From the beginning The project took into account the installation of an infrastructure that would allow the use of sunlight to power the tunnel through which the vehicles will circulate. The idea with this burial is to create a large green area of ​​80,000 m2 that, in addition to trees, will have another solution to shelter pedestrians: eight pergolas to combat the sun and rain. They won’t be the only thing they will do. As the Urban Planning, Environment and Mobility area of ​​the Madrid City Council has commented to ABCall of them will have photovoltaic panels that will total 1,055 panels for a nominal power of 437 kW and an annual production of 561 MWh. It is the equivalent of the annual consumption of 200 homes in Spain and the energy that will power the installations of the underground section. We will see when the works are completed, since the Madrid City Council already calculation a production of 1,158 MWh per year. Geothermal. All the pergolas will not be the same and the panels will be installed in the most optimal way possible to meet this estimated production, but it is not the only system planned to supply the park facilities with electricity from renewable sources. An example is the Ángel González Municipal Public Library, located at one end of the project. Currently, and as detailed the town hall, the thermal installation compose of a 285 kW boiler and a 220 kW chiller. In their place, two 150 kW heat pumps will be installed and will employ low temperature geothermal energy to create a water circuit tempered at a constant 25 degrees. It is a form of renewable energy that takes advantage of the constant heat of the shallow subsoil to air condition buildings and produce hot water. Undertaking work to switch to low-temperature geothermal is a complex and expensive process, but on the scale of the A5 underground, it makes a lot of sense. In this way, a pump will exchange heat with the ground to extract ground temperature in winter and, in summer, transfer heat from the building to the subsoil and, thus, cool the library. All this without local combustion. Mountains in the capital. And since we’re talking about renewables and reusing, it’s curious what they will do with some of the land they are excavating. Instead of having to manage it as waste, in part of the walk will be created three artificial hills. It is a good way to take advantage of surplus land, but it will also have a useful function. They will house thousands of trees that must be relocated due to current works, but, in addition, each of the hills will have a purpose. One will be a park with picnic areas and biodiversity areas, another will house a skatepark and another will become a viewpoint. Let them finish now…That is the feeling of the neighbors who have been enduring headaches from noisebut also an urban ‘Mario Kart’. Because it is very good to undertake works that use renewable energy to solve specific problems, but it is normal that there are those who are choking on these works. In the end, it is not easy to cut one of the access arteries to the city for almost two years to bury 3.2 kilometers of a highway on which 80,000 vehicles circulate a day. There is less left until the end of 2026… Images | MadridMadrid City Council In Xataka | Madrid wants to put 110,000 tons of weight on the M-30. And the challenge is not technical: it is not to collapse the road

There are people using AI to plan murders. The question is what AI companies are doing about it

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On February 10, an 18-year-old girl shot and killed her mother and brother. Then he went to the institute and murdered seven more people, finally committing suicide. The disturbing thing is that the author had talked about it with ChatGPT and OpenAI had the opportunity to notify the police, but chose not to. What has happened? They count in the Wall Street Journal that, in June of last year, OpenAI’s automated system detected several messages that a user had sent to ChatGPT describing scenarios of armed violence. For some employees they were very worrying because they could end in real violence, so there was an internal debate about whether to notify the Canadian authorities. They finally closed his account, but they didn’t notify anyone. Now Canadian authorities have summoned them to ask for explanations. There is more. He Tumbler Ridge shooting It is not the only case in which AI has been used to plan a crime. At the beginning of 2025, a man parked a Cybertruck full of explosives in front of a hotel in Las Vegas with the intention of detonating it (although in the end the only victim was himself). Days before, the author I had asked ChatGPT how to do it. In this case, the chatbot did not detect any concerning messages, but we know this because OpenAI searched through its messages after the fact. In Seoul, a woman was jailed for the alleged murder of two people due to benzodiazepine poisoning. The investigation revealed that the accused had gone to ChatGPT to find out what the dangerous dose was and what happened if it was mixed with alcohol. The messages in this case are not that alarming and could arise out of genuine doubt, but it is another example of ChatGPT being used in the commission of a crime. Why is it important. Artificial intelligences have become a kind of confessional to which we tell all kinds of secrets, even the darkest. There are those who consider that AI is a friendhis psychologist or even his lover. In this sense, it is not strange for someone to tell ChatGPT that they are going to kill their family or want to detonate a car full of explosives. What is worrying, and where we should focus, is what companies are doing about it. At the moment, it seems not enough. Are they obligated? Confessing to your psychologist or psychiatrist that you want to hurt someone is one of the reasons why you not only can, but should break your relationship. professional secret and alert the authorities. However, no matter how much we use chatbots as psychologists, at the moment there is no law that forces AI companies to report these types of interactions, but it is an internal decision. The obligation, therefore, is not legal, but ethical. How to make a homemade bomb. Cases like that of the Tumbler Ridge shooter are not something that has begun to happen with the arrival of AI chatbots. Instructions for creating homemade bombs have been around for decades. bringing the authorities to their heads, Even before the use of the Internet became popular, manuals of this type were circulating. The same thing happens with the suicide cases; You don’t need to ask ChatGPT, we can Google it or write in a forum. In statements to New York Timesa former OpenAI employee highlights an important nuance: with a chatbot you don’t usually do a simple search, but rather you can have a longer conversation where the intentions are clearer. In this sense, it may be easier to detect cases like the Tumbler Ridge shooter, but there may also be many false positives due to users who are writing fictional stories or using AI as role-playing. Complicated. In Xataka | Investing in data centers for AI is insane, and it’s going to get worse. much worse Cover image | Pexels, Unsplash

In Madrid they sell an apartment for 20.9 million euros. The question is not whether it is the most expensive in history, but what that means

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He has earned the unofficial title “most expensive apartment in Madrid” and, although it is difficult to confirm it because in the luxury sector there are operations that never reach transcendence, it certainly has the potential to be so. To start with its price. The apartment that Property Partners announces in Jerónimos, in the heart of the capital, it costs a whopping 20.9 million euros. Beyond that figure, the home’s size (1,008 m2), display of luxuries and extras is striking. For example, it has no decoration. It has “works of art.” Not a typical main room, but a “social area” that covers about 200 m2. In any other advertisement that vocabulary might sound like an exaggeration. Not here. The most expensive apartment in all of Madrid? So suggests it Property Partners, which claims to have in its portfolio what is “considered” the “most expensive property in Madrid.” The same unofficial title has been recognized in recent days several economic means, premises and generalistsincluding Tele Madrid that refers to the luxurious apartment as “the most expensive in the history” of the city. In reality, it is very difficult to confirm whether this is the case or not because discretion prevails in the luxury market. Many operations are closed with hardly any publicity, almost with their backs to the market. Others don’t. Last year, without going any further, John Taylor, a French real estate company specializing in luxury, brokered the sale of a home that was valued at 20 million. The property in question was located near Retiro Park and measured about 1,100 m2. The 20.9 million flat announced by Property has been announced for several months, although the agency assures that “there are offer processes” underway and interested people who have already made several visits. Click on the image to go to the tweet. What is the housing like? Enormous. And that’s an understatement. According to the token Published by the real estate agency itself, the apartment has a constructed area of ​​1,008 m2, although it identifies 812 m2 as “housing area”. Seven bedrooms (five en suite), six bathrooms and three toilets are distributed throughout this vast space, as well as amenities such as a gym, wine cellar and large living rooms. A reporter from EPE was able to visit the apartment and says that one of the first things that catches your attention is a 200 m2 room named “social area”. Do we know more? Yes. And it points in the same direction: that of exclusive luxury. The house, located in Los Jerónimos, has five parking spaces and two storage rooms, terraces with views of the Botanical Garden and furniture in line with the profile of its market. Tele Madrid assures Its renovation alone cost two million, to which is added another for the furniture. As a finishing touch, it incorporates works of art. That the apartment (the agency dates it back to the 70s) is so spacious in the heart of the center is explained by its past: in reality it is made up of three independent homes that a former owner bought and mergedoccupying an entire floor. Why is it interesting? Because beyond how striking the price or the characteristics of the apartment are, the advertisement connects with a larger trend: the increase in price of the home. That the price per square meter has been rising for years (in Madrid and the rest of Spain) is nothing new. Idealistic sample that in the last year the m2 has skyrocketed by 14.8% in the capital, reaching a maximum of almost €5,900/m2, although there are certain areas where this value is much higher. In Retiro there are more than 7,800 and in Salamanca they are close to 10,000. The announcement of the Los Jerónimos apartment reminds us, however, that the price increase is not exclusive to the conventional residential market. It also affects luxury. At the end of 2025 Diza Market published a report which shows that the cost of prime housing in the region rose by 95% in a matter of a decade, between 2014 and 2025. The analysis focused, however, on the luxury sector in which houses worth several million are moved, without reaching stratospheric figures. Are there more indicators? Yes. Savills has published another report in which it points out that the price of prime housing in the capital “triples the rate of global growth expected for 2026.” “If we focus the analysis on the first consolidated, the average prices in Madrid are around €16,000-17,000/m2, reaching peaks of between €25,000 and €30,000/m2”, details Santiago de Miguel, director. “The forecast is that the market will continue slightly bullish, but with sustained demand. The international buyer continues to have his sights set on Madrid.” “The Madrid market super luxury has reached a degree of maturity that allows operations of this caliber,” agrees an interview with Five Days Felipe Reuse, from Property Partner. Data from the Notarial Statistical Portal show In fact, the dynamism of the market in the heart of Madrid, with the m2 above 11,000 m2, and where foreign buyers have a relevant weight, representing a third of the total. There are those who already points out that the demand is going outside the city, towards La Moraleja or La Finca. Image | Chris Curry (Unsplash) In Xataka | There is a Europe that is suffocating to pay for housing and another that lives in peace. And this map shows the differences

If the question is whether they forgot the elevator shaft in the tallest residential skyscraper in Spain, the answer is simple: it was much worse

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For many years, the Mediterranean horizon was the canvas on which Spain projected its most audacious ambitions, including some extremely difficult to catalog. In times of prosperity, the sky seemed limitless. Then, each silhouette in height began to count a different story about risk, pride and collective memory. The vertical dream born of euphoria. He Intempo building started to get up in 2006at the exact moment when credit was flowing without brakes and Benidorm continued to feed its obsession with growing towards the sky as if there were no tomorrow. We are talking about two tower-shaped monsters of almost 200 meters joined by a golden diamond, a hyperbolic architecture that promised mark an era and become the new icon of the Mediterranean “Beniyork”. The project was born with generous financing from a Galician box and with a ridiculous social capital compared to the magnitude of the work, a disproportion (and a nonsense) that today sums up better than anything the climate of that Spain that believed that the cranes would never stop turning. From the symbol of the future to the monument to the bubble. But the crisis of 2008 changed the script suddenly. The loan skyrocketed above 100 million, the financial institution went bankrupt and the debt ended in hands of the Sarebthe bad bank. The works were paralyzed, the developer entered into internal conflict and the building was left with its structure practically finished but trapped in a legal and financial limbo. For years, his shadow threatened to add to that long list of phantom monsters, in fact, it was the golden skeleton that dominated the Poniente beach, a mass visible for kilometers that summarized the collapse of a model economical based on brick and easy financing. The reality was worse than the myth. Then came the stories and legends, one turned into a meme and repeated a hundred times even in media reference. It happens that, it is not that in the tallest residential skyscraper in Spain they forgot the elevator shaft, it is that the reality it was much worse. The work accumulated erratic decisions, changes in construction, salary delays, serious accidents and chaotic management in which floors were concreted without having definitive plans for the upper ones. The project was at 93% with 100% of the loan consumed, there was physical risk due to the deterioration of the structure and a bankruptcy of creditors that left the fate of the giant in the hands of judicial administrators and investment funds. The problem was not a cartoonish technical detail, but rather a chain of incompetence, financial strain and poor planning that jeopardized the building’s entire viability. The elevator hoax that went around the world. Impossible to ignore it. The story that the architects “forgot the elevator shaft” was born of an ambiguous phrase and it became the perfect headline summer 2013. The image was irresistible: a skyscraper of almost 200 meters incapable of climbing its own neighbors. However, elevators existed, of course, and They worked and were planned in the plans. The photographs and subsequent media visits clearly demonstrated. It didn’t matter, the hoax was amplified in international media that they added layers fiction, from cables that didn’t fit to impossible redesigns. That anecdote overshadowed what was truly relevant: the problem was never technical, it was structural in business and financial terms. Rescue, redesign and change of owners. Years passed, and the bad bank promoted the necessary competition to prevent the tower from deteriorating and facilitated liquidity to complete the work. Later, an investment fund acquired the assetremodeled interiors that had become obsolete and corrected questionable decisions, such as hideous finishes that obscured the homes or layouts that did not take advantage of the sea views. Finally, the top diamond was reconfigured to offer more attractive apartments and the complex was relaunched, now as a luxury residential with thousands of square meters of common areas, hotel services and international marketing. From ghost to icon. Thus, and after more than a decade of delays, the Intempo residential skyscraper finally opened its doors and began to hand out the keys to his first clients. In total, 256 homes, 11 elevatorscomplete technical plants and a structure that rested on piles designed to support both towers. From that moment on, the colossus stopped being a simple media skeleton and became a building with neighbors and real activity. Its golden silhouette left behind the stories to keep you awake, it no longer represented only the bubble and failure, but also the resilience of a city that had made verticality its hallmark. That is why it is worth saying it once again: Intempo was not the skyscraper that forgot the elevator, it was the skyscraper that survived its own time. Image | Enrique Domingo, Diego Delso, Tim Rawle In Xataka | Matalascañas is an example of a major architectural failure: thinking that the beach of your childhood was going to be how you remember it. In Xataka | Parking lots were the goose that laid the golden eggs for bricks in Spain. Until someone created the tomb of Las Teresitas

If the question is whether there was life on Mars, NASA has a new explanation: it depends

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NASA’s Curiosity rover has been shedding light on Mars since August 2011, making authentic discoveries on its surface, in your clouds and of course, about its potential habitability. And if its younger brother Perseverance found a few months ago “the clearest sign of life we ​​have seen on Mars”, one of Curiosity’s latest discoveries is not so clear. What Curiosity found. Since 2012, Curiosity has been exploring Gale Crater, a place where there was a lake billions of years ago. In March 2025, while the rover’s integrated laboratory was analyzing a clay rock there, they found the presence of decan, undecan and dodecan. What’s that? Alkanes, that is, long chain hydrocarbons formed by hydrogen and carbon atoms. Why is it important. Because Curiosity’s discovery is the largest organic compounds ever found on the red planet and its size is such that its existence can hardly be explained by simple chemistry. On Earth, these types of hydrocarbons are usually fragments of fatty acids produced by living beings. However, on Mars, its origin is not so clear: it is reasonable to think of a biological origin, but with current evidence there is no confirmation. Biology or geology? The degradation of fatty acids causes the appearance of these hydrocarbons one way or another, but their presence does not imply that they necessarily come from a living organism. In fact, on Earth they can also be generated by geological processes. In short: detecting organic molecules on Mars does not mean finding life. Correlation does not imply causation. A “reasonable” hypothesis. So they analyzed the known non-biological sources of these organic molecules looking for an explanation for these quantities found. Since none of them fully explained this abundance, in this recent study published in Astrobiology that the research includes have raised a “reasonable” hypothesis: that living beings could have formed them. Among the known sources are molecules from meteorites that crash into the surface of Mars, cosmic dust, geological chemistry such as the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis plausible on early Mars or ultraviolet radiation, which in addition to destroying organic components can also form them, are some of the candidates. The method. To reach these conclusions, the team of scientists combined laboratory experiments, mathematical models and data from the rover, which allowed them to go back in time 80 million years to estimate how much organic matter existed at the beginning, before cosmic radiation destroyed it. The amount they were able to reconstruct far exceeds what unknown non-biological processes can generate. Of course, it does not affirm that there was life, nor are there fossils or biomarkers of course. In fact, their conclusion is clear: more studies are needed to conclude on the absence or presence of life on Mars. In Xataka | There are those who believe that 50 years ago we found life on Mars (and then accidentally destroyed it) In Xataka | China is getting closer to surpassing NASA in its Martian mission. And just invited other countries to join Cover | NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

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